The increasing influence of Blitter and Twisted!

On March 10th I published a quick post about the space shuttle Discovery completing it’s final mission. The writing was rushed but one part that took absolutely ages was finding what I thought was an inspiring picture of the shuttle in action. I searched across the web and NASA archives, hoping to find something that looked as good as the awe-inspiring shots of the Apollo spacecraft lifting off, taken from the top of the launch gantry.

After some difficult searching I finally found a NASA picture on a wall paper web site – one I hadn’t seen anywhere else:

Capturing the awesome space shuttle in action

Today I read an article on Wired.com dated April 12th and got a bit of a surprise. The same picture was used and the opening paragraph sounded very similar to part of my post.

Blitter and Twisted: With the shuttle programme drawing to a close and no direct replacement available it will be interesting to see what direction the US space programme will go in next – private startups like Elon Musk’s Space-X are becoming a viable option now that Obama has scrapped Constellation.

Wired: After exactly 30 years of ferrying astronauts and equipment into orbit, the space shuttle era is coming to an end. Private spaceflight companies are hard at work designing new ways to get into space, but there’s no ready replacement for the shuttle when it retires. NASA’s budget is in flux (along with the rest of the country’s finances), and the future of American spaceflight is fuzzier than it’s ever been.

The Wired article is is far more interesting than my post – it’s an interview with a NASA employee who worked on the shuttle and Apollo programmes. Still, it would be awesome to think the Wired author read my post and used it as a basis for the opening paragraph.